The Stuart Vampire
Page 23
She giggled slightly, evidently content at the man’s eagerness. “Aye, Sir, you can. May I sit with you?” The voice was velvety, and contained, he thought, the slightest trace of an Italian accent.
“I would be honoured, please.” She sat with effortless grace into the chair he had scrambled to pull out for her. In doing this, he caught a whiff of the lady’s chosen perfume, and he was certain it was rosemary.
“I hope you will not be offended,” she said, once he had sat back down in his chair, “but I could not help but overhear your remarkable conversation with the couple that just left. I must confess I was rather enthralled by it all.”
“Enthralled? I suppose it was rather absorbing. Although, I must confess, I found it ever so bizarre. I don’t quite know what to make of it. Why, it’s the very sort of odd story one’s brain conjures up when one is asleep.”
“You mean a dream?” she offered.
“Yes, of course,” replied the journalist, with a little chuckle.
“Well, perhaps I can clear things up for you?” she answered, as she leant forward conspiratorially.
He smirked. “Don’t tell me you also know about these strange beings of the night?”
“Intimately,” she replied, folding the veil up to reveal her face.
She was a most beauteous lady, with hair of spun gold, and a face worthy of being painted by a Renaissance master. The journalist swallowed hard as he looked across into her strange green-yellow eyes. He felt a chill go up his spine. He remembered what the Stewarts had said to him about such eyes — they were the eyes of an evil vampire.
“Let me introduce myself. My name is Griselda…”
Afterward
A note on the spelling: I have tried to adhere to UK spelling throughout.
I read Northanger Abbey when I was eleven and The Monk when I was thirteen. Both books have stayed with me, and I hope I may have contributed to the genre of gothic novel with The Stuart Vampire. The story came to me in a dream as I was stuck in bed following a painful ankle injury over the summer in 2013. I had been looking at portraits of Henry Stuart, Duke of Gloucester, and there was something in his haunted eyes that clicked with me. Though he lived only twenty years, I wanted to make him a hero and so he was the perfect choice for the vampire hero of this tale.
I’m also really pleased to have been able to write some bits in the Renaissance and the Victorian eras — which are one of my favourite time periods other than the 17th century (of course!).
Whilst the first chapter is a fictionalised history of Henry’s life (and the last meeting between Charles I and Elizabeth and Henry is from Elizabeth Stuart’s account of that meeting), the rest of the story is largely fictional. In other words, do not take anything seriously. Henry lived only twenty years and did, in fact, die from smallpox in 1660. There was indeed a horrific plague in the early 1660s, but there was no mutation that caused zombies, sorry. The plague was truly devastating but was eventually stamped out as a result of the Great Fire of 1666.
I quoted from The Diary of Samuel Pepys and The Diary of John Evelyn.
In order to become more acquainted with particulars surrounding supernatural beliefs in the 17th Century, I relied upon The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology by Rossell Hope Robbins from 1959.
For the descriptions of the plague, I consulted primary sources and found the Encyclopedia of Plague & Pestilence: From Ancient Times to the Present, edited by George Childs Kohn, most enlightening.
The following were also very interesting and helpful:
A Journal of a Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
The Discovery of Witches by Matthew Hopkins
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my family, on both sides of the Atlantic, for supporting my endeavours and giving me the opportunity to do the things I love. I would like to thank my husband, Gavin, and his company Orland Media Ltd for formatting this book, designing the cover of the original edition, and doing many other things to help bring this book to fruition. Without his support, I simply would not have been able to do this.
Many thanks to my wonderful proof-readers: Faith Bach, Samuel McLean, and Laura Brennan. Thanks as well to all the Beta readers, and for those who purchased the first edition. This is an expanded, re-edited version, and is now exactly as I wanted it to be.
I would also like to thank Maureen P. Smith for her cover artwork for the first edition of The Stuart Vampire, which she made using watercolour and Gum Arabic. You can see more of Maureen’s beautiful art and purchase them on her website at:
www.maureenpsmith.com
Thanks to Tour Guide Girl for helping me with the details pertaining to Henry Stuart’s resting place in Westminster Abbey; Eileen Oleary for fact-checking my Charles I information; Bob Smith, for helping me find a suitable eating establishment in Victorian London.
This novel is dedicated to T.J. Hiller — who has been a constant friend to me since we were in middle school in Rockledge, Florida. Congratulations to T.J. and his bride, Ciarra. I really hope you both like this book!
Thanks as well to all the readers at my The Seventeenth Century Lady website, Facebook page, and Twitter — you have been so supportive of me, and I appreciate this immensely. You are wonderful people; thanks for your enthusiasm for the 17th Century! Keep Baroque-ing!
The following is an excerpt from Andrea Zuvich’s heart-breaking debut biographical fiction novel, published in 2013 by Endeavour Press, London.
His Last Mistress
The Duke of Monmouth & Lady Henrietta Wentworth
Prologue — January, 1675
He looked emotionless upon his reflection in the cracked, dirty looking-glass before him. His eyes were dark, deep pools of blue — a blue which sometimes seemed to take on the purplish colour of wild bluebells in the woodland, his short hair a rich chestnut brown, which he now covered with his elaborately curled auburn periwig. With a little more pride in his looks than is tasteful, he knew his was a face that could captivate any woman: he was blessed with exquisite features, a strongly-defined jaw, a well-shaped nose, a cleft in his chin, good teeth, inherited from his beautiful, deceased mother, Lucy. With his tallness of height and his unquestionable virility, he was truly his father’s son. His father was none other than King Charles the Second of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
He was James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch, Earl of Doncaster, Baron Tynedale, Knight of the Garter and Master of the Horse. His head was pounding with his latest hangover, his mind a scattered mess of graphic images of debauchery that he couldn’t make sense of. A tangled riot of red hair, gyrating breasts, and rutting dogs came to mind. Lost in these salacious thoughts, he began to fasten his lace cravat around his neck; the stubble on his throat prickled the elegant fabric as he did so. His shirtsleeves were creased and stained with wine and ale, but he shrugged, knowing he would soon be back at home where he would wash and then get some much-needed sustenance. There was a small, but nasty gash by his Adam’s apple, which had clotted overnight but had left a smear of blood at his collar.
In the mirror’s reflection, he caught sight of movement behind him. It was the woman he had slept with the night before. He felt a shudder of repulsion as he suddenly remembered her — a plump, ugly lass of about sixteen with greasy red hair and possibly the largest tits he had seen on a whore. By God, he could smell her stench anew as she spread her graceless limbs across the crumpled sheets sleeping. Her skin had bruises and teeth marks from her more savage clients and his skin crawled at the thought of having so much as touched her. He had been so drunk last night that he hadn’t cared into what he was thrusting so energetically. In the frantic, animal heat of lust, she had accidentally cut him with one of her jagged fingernails — hence the gash.
He had to stifle the bile rising in his gorge at the thought of what he had done with the wench as he finally tugged on his long brown leather boots.
The repulsion hit him anew.
He had to leave before the wretch awaken
ed. He quietly placed some coins — coins that bore his father’s noble profile — onto the small table by the bed where the prostitute lay snoring now, saliva dribbling from the side of her open mouth. He left the room in haste, wrenching his thick green coat onto his arms as he stepped down the creaking wooden stairs of the insalubrious Southwark brothel.
“There must be more to life than this, and war,” he said to himself as he rode back upon his black horse through the snow-dusted streets towards Whitehall Palace, where there was to be a masque that evening. He was only twenty-six, yet he had seen more than his fair share of battles and lechery, and he was tiring of it all. Spoiled since he was a child, he had indulged every whim, every fantasy, satiated almost every human urge to the point where nothing now brought him joy; the endless parties with nihilistic wits and vain fops were beginning to bore him senseless.
“There must be more.”
Desirous for more of the dashing, but doomed, James, Duke of Monmouth? His Last Mistress is available in both eBook and paperback.
About the Author
Andrea Zuvich (aka The Seventeenth Century Lady) is a 17th-century historian, historical advisor, and historical fiction authoress. Her biographical novella, His Last Mistress: the Duke of Monmouth and Lady Henrietta Wentworth, was published by Endeavour Press, London, in 2013. Zuvich received double BA degrees in History and Anthropology from the University of Central Florida, and continued her History studies with the University of Oxford. She has been filmed for De Gouden Eeuw for NTR television (The Netherlands), in which she spoke about William III, and was recently on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour discussing the life of Queen Anne. She was one of the original developers of and leaders on The Garden History Tours at Kensington Palace, London. Zuvich lives in Windsor, England, with her husband and their cat, Blackie.
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